Another Colorization Experiment
The results of previous experiments having been inconsistent, I thought of another way to test Photoshop's Neural Colorization tool. This is a picture of my parents on Christmas, 1970. I shot this on Anscochrome 400 slide film, which was the only high-speed color film at the time. This was the first time I was ever able to shoot available light indoors. It appeared and disappeared from the market very quickly and this was the only roll of this brand I ever shot.
#1 is a JPG copy of the original DNG scan with no edits. This is basically a monochrome red as it was a daylight film shot under incandescent light.
#2 is the auto-colorization of that file (no edits again.) The colors are off, as you will see in #5
#3 is the best color I could get when I first tried (7-8 years ago) to do something with #1. The color is better, but still not very good.
#4 is the auto-colorization of #3. If this had been someone else's kitchen and parents, I might have been OK with this. But it was my kitchen and my parents so it was not OK.
#5 is what I accomplished today using regular Photoshop adjustments and not the colorization tool.
Yes, the color is still not perfect and it never will be because it was a daylight film. It is also very grainy. Kodak's high-speed Ektachrome would be vastly better a few years later.
The point of all this is that this tool can be useful, mostly for B&W images. In color photography, there is no substitute for getting a good white balance.
3 Comments
#4 popped out for me as looking the most authentic for the time period, #5 looks a little on the warm side for my taste (perhaps more so when viewed next to #4).
It's amazing what you are achieving with these Andrew, thanks for sharing your experimentation and new-found expertise with the group.
I agree that #5 is still a bit warm, but having grown up in that house, I can tell you that #5 is by far the most accurate color rendition of these images. In reality, the walls and wood trim were actually white. Those are copper plates on the wall. The cabinets look about right. I've forwarded this to my sister and she will have no hesitation to tell me I've misremembered something.
Sounds good Andrew. Obviously in this case your goal is to represent the home as you/others remember it.